Education Secretary Betsy DeVos announced Monday that she will no longer enforce a provision in federal law that bars religious organizations from providing federally funded educational services to private schools.

So how does the “Budget for a Better America” treat Medicare and the other programs that Trump vowed to safeguard at all costs? By calling for even larger cuts to them than the White House proposed this time last year, when it formally abandoned Trump’s campaign pledges. The budget for the 2019 fiscal year called for five hundred and fifty billion dollars in cuts to Medicare over ten years. With the budget deficit skyrocketing as a consequence of the Trump-G.O.P. tax bill, the 2020 budget would reduce spending on Medicare by eight hundred and forty-five billion dollars over the next decade. Even in Washington, that’s a lot of money.

Pope Francis said on Tuesday that the
Roman Catholic Church had faced a persistent problem of sexual abuse of
nuns by priests and even bishops, the first time he has publicly
acknowledged the issue.

Catholic nuns have accused clerics of sexual abuse in recent years in India, Africa, Latin America and in Italy, and a Vatican magazine last week mentioned nuns having abortions or giving birth to the children of priests.

In a new study published Thursday in the journal Science, political scientists surveyed the inhabitants of this Internet pocket around the time of the last presidential election, from Aug. 1 to Dec. 6, 2016. They found that people who shared fake news were more likely to be older and more conservative. “Super-sharers” were responsible for the bulk of fake news, soaking their Twitter feeds in falsehoods with the gusto of kids with water pistols. They were enthusiastic communicators, tweeting an average of 70 times a day, and had a very limited reach.

The Dunning-Kruger effect explains why unskilled people think they know it all and tend to be overconfident.

Here’s an excellent article by Gwynn Guilford, at Quartz, about the failure of American manufacturers. It focuses largely on the management failures at GM.

An excerpt:

” “American companies tend, fundamentally, to mistrust workers,” writes Keller in Rude Awakening. “There is a pervading attitude that ‘if you give them an inch, they’ll take a mile’ because they don’t really want to work. “

A Texas Elementary School Speech Pathologist Refused to Sign a Pro-Israel Oath, Now Mandatory in Many States — so She Lost Her Job

The anti-BDS Israel oath was included in Amawi’s contract papers due to an Israel-specific state law enacted on May 2, 2017, by the Texas State Legislature and signed into law two days later by GOP Gov. Greg Abbott. The bill unanimously passed the lower House by a vote of 131-0, and then the Senate by a vote of 25-4.

Child language specialist, Bahia Amawi, is a U.S. citizen received an offer to extend her teaching contract for another year, but it required she sign a promise not to participate in a boycott of Israel (BDS). She refused to sign because of the pro-Israel oath, was not re-hired, and is now suing over violation of her First Amendment rights.

At the time that Texas enacted the law barring contractors from supporting a boycott of Israel, it was the 17th state in the country to do so. As of now, 26 states have enacted such laws — including blue states run by Democrats such as New York, California, and New Jersey — while similar bills are pending in another 13 states.

"Local media" (is it?)
For those who aren’t quite sure why these media layoffs keep happening, or think “it’s the internet!” or “people don’t pay to subscribe,” there’s a lot more going on. Though that is part of that. Here’s a cliffs notes version - not exhaustive but it hits the highlights (Twitter thread)

Did you know?

Funding Corruption

The Lie of “Nader Cost Gore the 2000 Election”

It’s one of the oft-cited lies, regurgitated by people and by the media (they’re lazy). Gore lost by 543 votes. 200,000 Florida Democrats voted for Bush! There were 8 third parties running, and ANY ONE of them got more than Gores 543-vote loss. Most of those who voted for Nader would have never voted for Gore, anyway. This lie is promulgated by the duopoly to discourage voters from voting for a third party.Dispelling the Myth